Due West: Russia lacks a real conservative movement

A holocaust is around the corner!”,
“Eichmann would have been proud!”, and “Who is next?” scream Russia’s liberal
bloggers. State TV, as well as pro-Kremlin and numerous Orthodox websites, send
quite a different message: “They are after our children!”, “Gays are Russia’s
shame!” and “Nip this danger in the bud!”

The bill “for the prevention of homosexual
propaganda to minors” sailed through its first reading in Russia’s parliament,
but it also exposed tensions that are unparalleled even by the standards of
contemporary Russia (where the government is hardly shy about issuing bans and
curtailing civil liberties).

The bill has been branded “homophobic” by
numerous high-placed Western officials and influential organisations, including
the EU’s foreign affairs chief Baroness Ashton, German Foreign Minister Guido
Westerwelle and Human Rights Watch, among others. It would impose fines on
those individuals or organisations that engage in homosexual propaganda among
minors.

The State Duma is pressing on with its
adoption-related initiatives, while for many in Russia’s weakened opposition,
gay rights have become the latest rallying cry. On both sides of the political
divide, grotesque exaggeration thrives as camouflage for unpleasant truths.

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The Kremlin has ordered the pliant Duma to
adopt the law, which is a world away from the Nazi regime’s persecution of
homosexuals. As a piece of legislation, it pursues two aims, the first being to
bolster its standing in provincial Russia, Vladimir Putin’s main power base. There, in Perm or Khabarovsk, relaxed metropolitan attitudes to homosexuality
are rarely if ever voiced.

Its other aim is to distract public opinion away
from the one theme that is of real concern to Russia’s ruling elite: the US
“Magnitsky Act” and the Kremlin’s response to it – a blanket ban on American
citizens adopting Russian children.

The bill is formulated in such deliberately
vague and general terms that it virtually gives enforcement officials carte
blanche to harass gay activists, or anyone they choose, for a range of
activities so broad that it even encompasses reading publicly poems by the
Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (who was bisexual) near a school.

On the bright
side, few people here believe that the law will actually be implemented as it
would bring nothing but embarrassment.

On the opposition side, the gay rights
lobby seized the opportunity to incorporate its demands into the wider
opposition narrative of the struggle with the Kremlin.

Some Russian opposition leaders say that
advocating gay rights, although a noble endeavour in itself, does not help the
Kremlin’s opponents gain ground in the provinces, where the attitude to the
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement is frosty to say the least. But
they are running big risks.

The line that gay rights activists are
giving to the public is very straightforward: anyone who is against gay rights
Netherlands-style is a homophobic Kremlin stooge. A radical left-libertarian
attitude to societal values is recast as a mainstream slogan.

In these circumstances one thing is very
visible: Russia lacks any meaningful movement or party that is conservative in
the Western sense of the word. That essentially means pro-democracy,
pro-market, but also pro-family values and traditional attitudes (such as
recognising the importance of faith).

Those claiming to be Russian conservatives
often turn out to be individuals with a tentative grasp on reality, who demand
the restoration of the Soviet Union under absolute monarchy, who despise
democracy as “a devilish import from America” and advocate prison sentences for
gays.

While many Russians oppose these patently silly laws that discriminate
arbitrarily against citizens, not many are quite ready to see the radical
redefinition of their values on which the EU seems to insist.

Unfortunately there is no voice of reason
between unfettered liberal modernisers and those who consider reform and
democracy to be synonymous with destroying tradition. Russia badly lacks an
equivalent of the US Republican Party, and it is by no means inevitable that
one will develop.